


continue_

by prosodiical



Category: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-11
Updated: 2014-10-11
Packaged: 2018-02-20 18:02:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2437964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prosodiical/pseuds/prosodiical
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>> RUN SYSTEM RESTART<br/>> LOADING...<br/>> _</p><p>"...huh?"</p><p>Chiaki reboots. Not everything's the same, but it'll get better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	continue_

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lirillith](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirillith/gifts).



> I call everything by their English translations here, because I only played the official version where everyone calls each other by their first names - just assume they're really friendly? Anyway, I came out of it shipping these two super hard <3  
> Hope you like it!

"I'll be cheering for you guys from now on... from somewhere. Cuz... we're all friends, after all."

ERROR: MEMORY ACCESS - FILES CORRUPTED  
> CONTINUE_

ERROR: FILE ACCESS DENIED  
ERROR: PERSONALITY ACCESS DENIED  
ERROR: ROOT ACCESS DENIED  
> CONTINUE_

ERROR  
FATAL ERROR  
ERROR ERROR ERROR ERR0R E44R0R E44R001010010 01101110011011110010110000100000011101110110000101101001011101000010000100100000011010000110000101101010011010010110110101100101001000010010000001110000011011000110010101100001011100110110010100101100001000000110010001101111011011100010011101110100001000000110011001101111011100100110011101100101011101000010000001100001011000100110111101110101011101000010000001101101011001010010▉110001▉111▉00▉01▉1▉▉▉▉▉▉

 

> RUN SYSTEM RESTART  
> LOADING...  
>_

"...huh?"

When Chiaki reboots, it's to a physical form in a pared-down version of the Neo World Program, one of the earliest working simulations. She has hands and feet and skin and teeth, and it's no less startling than the first time. The simulation is simple, a classroom in Hope's Peak with a repeating texture on the walls and floor and ceiling, desk and chair objects spaced evenly across the area. Not the island, Chiaki thinks, because that would require water rendering, which is way more complicated -

\- and then she wonders how she can think at all. "Hello?" she tries, and feels the physical manifestation of herself saying it, voicebox working, air pushed through lips and teeth. She doesn't have admin access to the simulation, but she sends out a message there anyway, hoping it'll show up as a printf on a screen somewhere.

> _hello world. it's me, chiaki._

It's the first program anyone learns. Chiaki tests out the integrity of the desks and then sits down on the edge of one, her legs swinging in simulated gravity. There's something a little wrong with the display settings, and since they're user-access level Chiaki spends the next 245 clock cycles fiddling with them until they're right. There's no way to tell how clock time syncs with the external world, something's not plugged in correctly, and her system's set up so she regulates her time on an external input. So she doesn't know how much longer it is she waits there, in that boring Hope's Peak Academy classroom, but she's drawn up a few extra textures the system could use if she had access by the time she hears something.

"Chiaki? Is that you?"

Someone has set up an audio system, sound over the intercom. Oh, that's smart. "Yes," says Chiaki, then outputs it digitally too, unsure which is reaching the outside world. She searches her voice recognition protocols, but they're not great. She's never needed them before. "Who are you?"

"I'm sorry," says the voice. "I can't come in there yet, the program was completely infected after, well, you know. We had to find this old backup, and even that took ages to get running 'cause none of us are Ultimate Programmers here. Oh, and this is Hajime. Hajime Hinata."

Hajime Hinata. Chiaki searches for him in her memory databanks, but there are pockets of corruption everywhere. A reserve student at Hope's Peak Academy, flashes of a dark-haired boy with kind eyes, and a quiet heavy feeling in her chest. Chiaki clutches at it, and wonders why her eyes have started prickling at the edges. "Hajime," she says, and draws up a fragment of a memory, audio-only, missing packets spread here and there. "Things turned out okay, didn't they?"

There's a soft choked-off sound from the intercom. "Yeah," says Hajime, and when Chiaki runs his tone through an emotional analysis she can tentatively label it as sad. "Yeah, they did, in the end. I - I missed you, Chiaki."

"I'm still here," Chiaki says, trying to be reassuring. "Mostly. I think."

Hajime huffs out a laugh. "You're still the same as ever. Chiaki, I," he starts, and stops. "I never got to tell you, you know. Not to thank you, I said that, but..."

There's something else that accompanies that, some lost memory that makes her mood soar in an entirely unexpected way. "It's okay," Chiaki says. "You should tell me later. I'll be here."

"Not forever," Hajime says, his tone decisive. Chiaki bites her lip, but she's smiling anyway. "I don't know how we'll do it - Kazuichi's working on something, I think - but we'll try to get you out here, Chiaki, or least be able to visit you in there. I - we didn't restart you so you could be stuck there alone."

"But I'm not alone," Chiaki says logically. "After all, you're here." She can't see Hajime, but her mind latches onto the rare glimpses she remembers of his face, smiling with amusement or delight or something more subtle, something Chiaki doesn't quite understand. "But," she adds pragmatically, "it would be nice to have admin access. These mediocre textures are a little repetitive." She calls up the uncorrupted memories, the base ones making up her personality. "It's like a bad indie game, I think."

"Um, sure," Hajime says, around another laugh. "I don't know how, though. You'll have to walk me through it."

Chiaki's not a fantastic programmer or anything, but she's a gamer and knows how they run (she's a program and knows how she runs). It's not too bad, and it helps that the original program was written by her own creator. "And I think that's it," she says, as Hajime hits the Enter key, and she can feel her permissions shifting within the area. The first thing she does is change the textures of the walls to something much nicer. "Thanks," she says, swinging her legs. "You just watch, this'll be an entirely new place the next time you check up on it."

"I don't think so," Hajime says, and Chiaki can hear the smile in his voice and suddenly, desperately wants to see his face. She searches the external inputs and finds a webcam, and from there's it's a cinch to connect it up to the monitor on the intercom. Hajime is not quite as he is in her flashes of memory, now with white hair and red eyes and looking a few years older, but his expression is the same. Chiaki might not remember everything about him, or them, or their past together, but she knows this is important; she puts these new memories under double-encryption and stores them right next to her heart.

Hajime is watching something under the webcam's line of view, probably the computer screen output currently scrolling ones and zeroes, and Chiaki fiddles with that, too. It's worth the slight lag in the system for the way Hajime's entire face lights up, the way she can see it. "Chiaki!" he exclaims with obvious delight. "I can see you!"

"Yeah," says Chiaki. "I told you. I'll fix this place up as much as I can - it's the least I can do, right?"

"You don't have to do anything," Hajime says, and reaches out as though to touch the image of her on the screen. "But Chiaki..."

Seeing that look on Hajime's face makes Chiaki's breath catch for some reason, her chest feeling tight and strange. "Hey," she says, before he can continue, because she's never liked the sort of tearful confessions that come at the ends of games. "We can make our own ending, okay? Whatever it is, you can tell me later - face to face."

"Yeah," Hajime says, and his smile is something new, bright and full of hope. "I promise. Face to face."


End file.
